Urmuz e il segreto delle nevrosi di guerra

The main characters of Urmuz writings are generally weird couples who physically fight in order to be recognized by the other despite the recognition of the other. The Hegelian dialectic is always in the background. In one of his writings, Emil Gayk, published in 1925, the war is ironically described, flowing in absurdist and nonsense tones. Urmuz’ inspiration might be Freud’s The Psycho-Analysis of War Neuroses, which deals with the fact that neuroses are caused by a conflict between repressed libidinal impulses and the “ego instincts” of self preservation. In Emil Gayk, the war is a sort of an exteriorization of Freud’s Todestrieb.